Whether or not it's "noise" might depend on if you think Chains of Thought are causally relevant? I liked these pieces if you want to read more about CoT / O1:

O1 Technical Primer: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/byNYzsfFmb2TpYFPW/o1-a-techn...

Using Search Was a Psyop: https://www.interconnects.ai/p/openais-o1-using-search-was-a...

Value Attribution: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FX5JmftqL2j6K8dn4/shapley-va...